So they principle album, and every song that follows — from the “Hell”-acious “Oh No!” in the bittersweet love song “All I Want Is You”—reflects on the inevitable end of every story. The long white veil in “Long White Veil” hides not the face of a bride but the frozen visage of a corpse (a nod to Lefty Frizzell's hit “The Long Black Veil”) and “Don't Go to the Woods” does not it's nothing but dread and caution: a prelude to “The Black Maria,” the dark heart of this album. This title may refer to arcane slang for a paddy wagon, or it may be Beasts Pirates in One piece, but Meloy writes his own rule here. Death is a walking shadow, never encountered by the living, but known by his heavy feet in the corridor. “Put out your lantern, put your affairs in the right place,” sings Meloy over acoustic guitar and a lonesome funeral horn. “Black Maria is coming for us all.”
As fancy as these songs are, Decemberists can't help but ground them in the very real, very horrifying present. This has never been their strongest theme, but at least they try to meet our current moment with the capitalist allegory of “The Reapers” and even “William Fitzwilliam” (which is haunted by the ghost of John Prine's “Paradise” ). The angriest song here, “America Made Me,” might have been twice as powerful if it were half as clever, but there's something to be said for soundtracking the discord with cute pianos and party horns. It's a tack they've developed since 16 Military Wives, though here the sentiment is more intense in its rage and disgust.
As it ever was, so shall it be again ends as you might expect: with a nearly 20-minute epic called “Joan in the Garden.” The length of the winding and the structure of many parts move to The Tain and its spawning The perils of love but it might align more closely with “I Was Meant for the Stage,” their creative interpretation of Her Majesty. It's a song about what the Decemberists do and why they do it, a meditation on art as a weapon against death — but, in this case, not theirs. Joan is literally in the garden, deep in the dirt, but Meloy is able to resurrect her with words: “Make her reach 10 miles up, make her hands cut mountains… write a line, erase a line.” After a five-minute folk passage and a five-minute prog section, the Decemberists give more than 10 minutes more to ambient noises, stray rhythms, broken chords, wrong cues. It sounds like they're hitting the stage and clearing the stage – a softer kind of death – and it's strangely moving. They may have stopped there instead of adding a dramatic coda, but they could never resist a big finish. As it ever was.
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